Trusts & Estates

Overview

The Trusts & Estates practice advises high-net-worth Connecticut families through the full cycle of wealth transfer: planning during lifetime, administration after death, and — when it becomes necessary — litigation in Probate Court or Superior Court. The group is led by Winona Thorpe, a Fellow of the American College of Trust and Estate Counsel, and works closely with Agatha Brennan, Senior Paralegal, who has anchored the firm's probate administration since 1998.

Most engagements begin with planning. Revocable trusts, irrevocable life-insurance trusts, grantor retained annuity trusts, and qualified personal residence trusts remain standard tools. For business-owning families, the planning conversation often starts with succession — who takes over, how equity is transferred, how the non-participating children are treated — and ends with documents only after that conversation is settled. We have done enough of these to know the sequence matters.

Connecticut's estate tax regime shapes much of the planning. The state's $13.99 million exemption (2025) tracks federal law and the CT gift tax remains the only such state-level tax in the country. We structure gifting strategies around that interplay, particularly for families whose members split residence between Connecticut and lower-tax jurisdictions. When clients relocate, we coordinate with counsel in the destination state on domicile documentation.

Charitable structuring is a distinct sub-practice. Thorpe represents several Connecticut family foundations on ongoing governance, grant-making compliance, and private-foundation excise tax issues under IRC sections 4940–4945. The group handles the Attorney General's office filings required under Connecticut's Solicitation of Charitable Funds Act and advises donors on charitable lead annuity trusts, charitable remainder trusts, and direct private-foundation gifts.

Fiduciary litigation is where the practice intersects with the firm's Litigation group. Will contests, trust-construction actions, accounting objections, and fiduciary-removal proceedings run through the Connecticut Probate Court system and, on appeal, through Superior Court. Brendan Thompson, a Senior Associate who spent his first three years at the firm working directly under founding partner Edwin Birch, handles most of the administration and disputed-estate work. Lorelei Nguyen focuses on estate planning for professionals and charitable foundation formation. Kris Holloway, a former wealth-management analyst, works with younger clients on incapacity planning and first-generation estate structures.

What distinguishes the practice is not a particular technique. It is that we know the Probate judges, we have closed enough complex administrations in Hartford, Farmington, and West Hartford Probate Districts to know the local practice, and we write trusts expecting they will be read by a Connecticut fiduciary thirty years from now — not by a software tool.